When wine is poured from a conventional glass wine bottle, any droplets of residual wine of sufficient size (and dependant upon the adhesion of the wine droplet to the glass bottle) around and beneath the lip of the bottle tend to drip down the outside of the neck and body of the bottle. The amount of unwanted “wine drip” depends on a variety of factors including the wine's viscosity and surface tension, the pouring angle of the bottle, the rate of pouring, the abruptness of ceasing the pouring, the glass surface properties, and the shape of the bottle. Dripped wine may stain a table surface or tablecloth onto which the bottle is placed.
Wine drip following pouring is evident with most, if not all, traditionally shaped glass wine bottles such as Bordeaux and Burgundy style wine bottles that are sealed with a cork plug closure. Stelvin-type threaded neck bottles with square-edged lips sealed with a screw cap are also susceptible to dripping, although the wine may be temporarily detoured through the bottle's threads. Some less common bottles containing effervescent wines and ciders as well as beer bottles have lips that differ markedly from traditional wine bottles, i.e., bead-shaped or protruding round lips, but these lips are also susceptible to the dripping problem.
As stated above, when wine is poured from the lip of a traditional glass wine bottle, a portion of the wine almost invariably drips down the outside of the bottle either during pouring or when the bottle is turned upright after pouring. Wine dripping is initiated when a stream of wine that is initially (and usually briefly) falling vertically from the lip of a wine bottle develops a hooked or “curled” flow. The orifice end of many traditional glass wine bottles is molded to form a somewhat curving or dome-shaped, or convex-outward end rather than either a flat or even a concave inward orifice end. Wine flowing over such a dome-shaped orifice end sometimes causes the exiting stream to assume the undesired curved flow over the end of the bottle, contributing to drip initiation. The curled flow tends to carry a small amount of the wine backward onto the underside of the bottle's neck and downward toward the heel of the bottle. As the bottle is tilted upright, any wine residing on the underside of the lip dribbles downward over the exterior of the bottle.
It has been found that a full or nearly full bottle of wine is more prone to the dripping problem than a nearly empty bottle. This observation is understood in terms of a changing tilt angle (i.e., angle of elevation of the neck) for a wine bottle being gradually emptied by a person controlling the rate of pouring. Elevation angles (abbreviated EA) for a bottle can be defined and measured from the tilt angle assumed by the “principal axis” of the bottle during pouring of wine from Bordeaux and Burgundy style wine bottles for example. The bottle's “principal axis” (aka, the “center axis”) is defined by a line extending from the center of the heel of the bottle (the bottle's bottom), upward through the bottle's neck in the direction of wine flow.
FIG. 1A shows typical elevation angles for a Bordeaux style wine bottle that is substantially full of wine, i.e., between 80% and 100% of the bottle's liquid capacity remains in the bottle. The level of liquid in the bottles is indicated by a horizontal line. When a bottle is full, a person generally elevates the neck of the bottle relative to the heel of the bottle to regulate the flow of wine from the bottle's orifice. The angle of elevation (EA1) of the bottle measured for the principal axis of the bottle is generally about 15 degrees to provide for controlled pouring. Without such elevation, wine would flow too rapidly from the bottle. The upward tilt of a wine bottle during pouring, however, induces the exiting stream of wine to curve and curl backward onto the underside of the neck surface, initiating wine dripping down the neck of the bottle.
As shown in FIGS. 2A-B, for a full bottle of wine being poured with an upward tilt angle of approximately 15 degrees, a droplet of wine exiting the orifice of an unmodified bottle will run “downhill” along the underside of the lip. The dripping problem is only exacerbated after pouring, when the bottle is turned upright. Conversely, when a bottle is nearly empty, i.e. less than 20% of the bottle's liquid capacity remains in the bottle, as shown in FIG. 1B, the neck of the bottle is tilted downward approximately 10 degrees or more.
Droplets of wine on the lip or body of a bottle may not reach the table surface if an absorbent towel or napkin is wrapped around the neck of the bottle before pouring. This approach, however, requires cleaning of the towel or napkin or additional costs for disposable napkins. Alternatively, any of a variety of wine bottle pouring devices may be purchased and attached to a wine bottle and/or its neck opening to control the flow of wine from a bottle. For example, a variety of spouts may be inserted into the neck opening to regulate the flow of wine, aerate the wine, and/or prevent drips. One bottle claiming to be the world's first dripless wine bottle was produced in 1954 by the Roma Wine Company and incorporated a thin-edged plastic casing in the neck of the bottle. These solutions, however, all require additional inserts and do not provide for direct pouring from a glass bottle.
Alternatively, many containers used for holding and dispensing liquids have at least one feature to minimize drips, such as a spout that extends from the edge of the container outward to facilitate pouring and thereby prevent the last portion of a stream of liquid from running down the sidewall of a container. For example, a glass cream pitcher or a laboratory beaker may include an angled extension of the container's lip that functions as a dripless pouring spout, while a gable-top cardboard milk container may include a fold-out spout that is also dripless. Such a pouring spout on the lip of a wine bottle, however, would not be practical as a solution to the dripping problem given the method for sealing the bottle.
Unlike glass bottles, which tend to have hydrophilic surfaces, bottles made of plastic (e.g., PE, PET, PP) tend to be hydrophobic. Consequently, the capillary adhesion of aqueous liquids (e.g., wine) to glass bottles is markedly different from their adhesion to plastic bottles, which makes plastic bottles less susceptible to dripping. Plastic bottles can also be molded to include a sharp lip edge to further prevent dripping, which is not feasible with glass bottles, as sharp glass edges are prone to chipping and create a safety hazard.
The present technology is directed to overcoming these and other deficiencies in the art.